The Moving Man

In the unharnessed dark the plowman stands,
On the bare hill against the dying sky.
Empty of his trade his heavy hands.

Ignorant, strong, and alone, he stands steady above
The valley where the comfortable farmsteads lie,
His heart already journeying, and his face
Ugly with extreme and unfathomable love.

Concerned now only with now, he has forgotten
That once his gray body was satisfied with sun,
That once his heart was held by that deep valley’s pattern
Where nine tall hazels stand and brown waters run.

The godchild of humility,
Creature of labor and man of earth,
Grown slowly strange with strong reality,
Come by toil and starvation to an astonishing rebirth,

He turns away in joy, in the leathery strength of his age,
Turns his back on the low lights’ promise and dream
Of body’s barter and mind’s merchandise.

In the hills of night, with the weather cold from the West,
Percy Plowman with the bald eyebrows
Makes long strides over dark furrows
Toward the gates of Paradise.